'Surf's up!':A call to take english soccer fan interactions on the internet more seriously

Soccer fandom practices in England have been significantly impacted by globalization. The creation of the Premier League in 1992, and the way in which satellite television company BSkyB dominated coverage of this, together with other developments, have led to changes in how fans consume top-level English soccer. Whilst such global transformations are well documented in the sociology of soccer literature, the implications of the rise of the most advanced global form of communication - the Internet - on the practices of fans of English soccer clubs, have not been fully taken into account by academics. As such, the significance of the Internet as a site for fans to interact remains under-investigated. This article argues that online interactions between fans of English clubs need to be taken more seriously by academics if they are to more fully understand how soccer contributes to the maintenance of social identities in contemporary England

Key mechanisms governing resolution of lung inflammation

Innate immunity normally provides excellent defence against invading microorganisms. Acute inflammation is a form of innate immune defence and represents one of the primary responses to injury, infection and irritation, largely mediated by granulocyte effector cells such as neutrophils and eosinophils. Failure to remove an inflammatory stimulus (often resulting in failed resolution of inflammation) can lead to chronic inflammation resulting in tissue injury caused by high numbers of infiltrating activated granulocytes. Successful resolution of inflammation is dependent upon the removal of these cells. Under normal physiological conditions, apoptosis (programmed cell death) precedes phagocytic recognition and clearance of these cells by, for example, macrophages, dendritic and epithelial cells (a process known as efferocytosis). Inflammation contributes to immune defence within the respiratory mucosa (responsible for gas exchange) because lung epithelia are continuously exposed to a multiplicity of airborne pathogens, allergens and foreign particles. Failure to resolve inflammation within the respiratory mucosa is a major contributor of numerous lung diseases. This review will summarise the major mechanisms regulating lung inflammation, including key cellular interplays such as apoptotic cell clearance by alveolar macrophages and macrophage/neutrophil/epithelial cell interactions. The different acute and chronic inflammatory disease states caused by dysregulated/impaired resolution of lung inflammation will be discussed. Furthermore, the resolution of lung inflammation during neutrophil/eosinophil-dominant lung injury or enhanced resolution driven via pharmacological manipulation will also be considered

Professional Football in Japan

In this comprehensive Handbook, John Goddard and Peter Sloane present a collection of analytical contributions by internationally regarded scholars in the field, which extensively examine the many economic challenges facing the world's most popular team sport. The Handbook is naturally divided into four parts: the product market, the labour market, country studies of individual leagues and policy issues. The authors explore why so many football clubs face financial difficulties despite the fact that attendances have risen in many countries, and television and commercial income has increased dramatically. They explain that the labour market is central to understanding these issues, due to trends such as increased bargaining power for the leading players, the acceleration of migration, and the internationalisation of the market for footballing talent at the top level. There is, however, diversity across countries as shown in the six cases of England, France, Italy, the Netherlands, the USA and Japan. Finally, the authors consider the policy issues, including the betting market, refereeing and corruption. This Handbook will appeal to sports economists, as well as those working in football governing bodies and individual clubs, sports journalists, and students of business

The happiness of Japanese academics: Findings from job satisfaction surveys in 1992 and 2007

This chapter focuses at the "subjective well-being at work" of Japanese academics through the examination of three major surveys of job satisfaction, undertaken in 1992 and 2007. The three surveys in relation to Japanese academia namely: 2007 The Changing Academic Profession (CAP) survey suggests that general levels of job satisfaction in Japan are relatively high, while the International Survey of Academic Profession (AP) data, which for several reasons might be considered to be more comparable to the 1992 Carnegie Survey, but offers less comparability with other countries, draws a less positive picture. The chapter examines some of the major changes that had taken place in the higher education system over the period of 1992 and 2007. It also focuses on job satisfaction as a proxy for well-being at the workplace and adapts Mathews and Izquierdo's four dimensions to the specific context of the Japanese academic workplace.</p

Seishin Habitus: Spiritual Capital and Japanese Rowing

La pratique sportive, élément important du curriculum scolaire des japonais, s'inscrit-elle dans la structuration de l'habitus de l'individu au Japon ? L'éducation physique permet-elle un accroissement de capital au sens que lui donne Pierre Bourdieu ? Se référant à la notion de ''Seishin'' comme modèle de compréhension du corps au Japon, la question du transfert d'un capital physique en capital culturel et économique est abordée à travers les points de vue de membres d'un club d'aviron japonais

Afterword: Reassembling after 3/11

Assembling Japan focuses on Japan’s modernization as a long-term process that is reliant on changing technology and that has led to the nation’s full engagement with the global system. This process forms a complex field of tensions, full of interesting dynamisms and synergies that can be best understood through the book’s methodology: anthropological analysis combined with historical contextualization. The approaches in this collection are manifold. Some chapters examine the themes of modernity, technology and Japan’s global experience though popular culture, from reggae to football, from television to film. Other topics include coffee, travel, economics, cultural politics and technological innovation in the field of robotics. All of the contributions aim to show how these global interactions have occurred and continue to take place in twenty-first-century Japan